


Something like Hope

by shayera



Category: SteamWorld Dig (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Apocalypse, Captivity, Gen, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Rescue, takes place during and in the aftermath of SWD2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-15 01:13:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29180814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shayera/pseuds/shayera
Summary: Rusty used to think he could save the world on his own. It doesn't work out that way.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 4





	Something like Hope

**Author's Note:**

> I guess I have feels about cartoon robots now.

He’d been sure he was done for.

Those shiners were going for the kill. It seemed almost like a trap, the way they’d swarmed him after those falling rocks knocked him over, a lot more determined than he thought they’d be capable of. He’d been fine taking on just one or two of them, or a handful, but it was a whole clan, and it didn’t go well.

It’d be such a useless death, too, work unfinished, and no one even knew he was down here.

But he does return to consciousness, all cogs accounted for. Perhaps he short-circuited before being smashed to bits, and the shiners just didn’t finish the job. He should probably get out of here before they get wise.

This cave is unfamiliar, though, so he must have been moved while he was out. There’s no signs of bot life, but there are shiner artifacts scattered all over, along with something that looks like bits and pieces of Vectron tech. It makes him uneasy even before he moves.

 _Tries_ to move. He’s stuck in place.

Pushing the panicked chirring inside him down, he glances around, only to realize that his limbs have been _bolted_ to the surface behind him. That’s not right. You don’t do things like that to a living bot. He struggles, but he doesn’t have the leverage to break free, and not the strength either, not without his tools. Someone really wanted to make him stay put – he can think of few reasons for that, and none of them are good.

He’s acutely aware that he’s augmented with Vectron technology beyond what most steambots can dream of. He also knows that _someone’s_ been causing the earthquakes. He’s been trying to stop them, so it makes sense that that someone has it out for him. If the unknown bot that is trying to shatter the world somehow used the shiners to capture him alive—

Well, let’s hope they hacked off more than they can carry.

Movement in his peripheral vision makes him whip his head around. ”What is the meaning of this?” he demands, before he realizes that it’s just a shiner. A large one, carrying some kind of technological equipment that seems incongruous in a shiner’s meaty arms. She blinks, the damp, fleshy orbs that serve for her eyes meeting his gaze.

”The meaning,” she says, surprising him by articulating clearly, ”Is that you’re going to stop ruining things for me, and start being of some use instead.”

In hindsight, he’s been stupid.

Yeah, he was right that the quakes were artificial. He was also right that they were made with bastardized Vectron tech. That’s why the dampeners he’d built to counter them had worked to siphon off the vibrations and lessen the damage.

But he’d believed ”artificial” meant ”bot-made”.

The bulky shiner tinkering with Vectron technology mere tiles away from his face has a different opinion on that.

It’s been two days. Maybe three. He knows now that he’s attached to a rudimental energy conduit. The shiner is working on a way to drain his own efficient Vectron-based energy system into her patchwork machinery.

He tries to talk to her, because what else can he do? He was never very good at making conversation, but he’d need the use of his limbs to do much of anything else. Turns out her name is Rosie. She’s the leader of the clan. She doesn’t drink moon juice, but she doesn’t mind her people being addicted. She’s upgraded her own strength using a ”dumbbell” system. She cares about the safety of her kin, but has nothing but hatred for the steambots on the surface. Unlike most shiners, she walks with purpose, speaks coherently, and knows her way around technology. She’s made him reevaluate his knowledge about shiners on all accounts but the most important one.

Just like every shiner he’s ever met, she’s deranged and dangerous. The intelligence only makes her more so.

Her attempts to drain him has been going by jumps and starts, but she’s made some progress, and each time the energy produced inside him is sucked away feels like someone is scoping out his very core with a pickaxe. Point is, it hurts. Worse, she knows very well that she’s hurting him, and she doesn’t care.

More importantly, she also doesn’t care that she’s built a reactor that threatens to tear the whole planet to pieces.

She talks, but she doesn’t listen to a word he says.

”I could help you, though,” he tries. He’s tried explaining just how dangerous the earthquakes are if they continue, but she’s convinced they’re nothing but an inconvenience. That’s still an inconvenience she’d want to be rid of. ”I _know_ Vectron tech. I could find a way to fix the reactor so it’s more stable. So it works _better_ , without causing earthquakes at all.” To be sure, he doesn’t know enough about her cobbled-together systems to know if he could make it run safely or not – it might be impossible. But she needs to shut the thing down. The dampeners he set up before she captured him will delay the critical damage, but her machine is still putting too much strain on the Earth’s core.

It has to stop, and he’s still the only one who can stop it. If she would only release him for a moment, there’s so many things he could try, but—

”Of course,” Rosie says, voice heavy with sarcasm. ”I’d trust you to work on my reactor after you went to all that trouble sabotaging it from a distance _and_ keep telling me it’s a doomsday device. You bots just don’t like that I’ve found a way to keep my people safe for good. We need that reactor, and I’m not letting you near it as anything but a battery.” She shifts a few cables that she’s been working on, and flips a switch.

The effect is immediate, and worse than anything before. A spark of white-hot agony runs through his furnace, and every gear in his body clamps up with a clatter, making him as stiff as the metal he’s made of.

Rosie frowns and turns the switch off, and it’s a small blessing, but at this point he’ll count the small blessings. He realizes it wasn’t out of concern for him – despite the intense pain this didn’t actually transfer any energy to her systems. She’s partly working on trial and error, and that was an error. Still, it’s not like things like that stops her.

It takes a few moments for him to find his voice again. ”Look,” he says, and it comes out more like a pained groan than he’d like. “You don’t have to believe me. You don’t even have to release me! Just let me look at the damned thing and see if there’s any way to save all of our lives! Everyone is going to die if this goes on! Your people _and_ mine! You _can’t_ —”

She grunts and flips that same switch again, on purpose this time. Suddenly there’s nothing but pain.

”You’re lying,” she says, almost conversationally, after turning it off. ”The reactor is made to keep my people _safe_ ,” she adds. ”That’s the whole point. I couldn’t care less what happens to you bots up top.”

He doesn’t know how to get through to her. The dampeners will delay the inevitable, but not forever. She has to stop using that reactor.

” _Please_ ,” he says, and he might actually be begging now. ” _No one_ is going to be safe if the whole world breaks apart. I swear, I’m just trying to save all our lives. Just turn the reactor off, and—"

She sighs and looks up from her instruments, and he flinches, bracing for her to flip that switch again. ”You don’t like being used,” she says, sneering. ”You bots, running around on the surface, having the whole place for yourselves, and still you want to wipe out the last of the shiners, because you’re scared of us. You know what you _are_.”

”We’re alive,” he counters. ”And we like to stay that way! I would’ve thought we had that in common.”

”You’re _tools_!” Rosie’s face distorts into a grimace. ”I’ve seen the ancient writings. The steambots were made to be tools in the service of humanity! That’s us, the shiners. You’re all tools that turned into monsters and massacred your own creators, and we have nothing whatsoever in common.”

He knows of the stories. Weird rumors of a time before the great calamity, when bots and shiners lived together on the surface, and some do say that shiners created the first bots – though some say it was the other way around. Either way it definitely ended with a war. But all of that is ancient history. ”I don’t care,” he says. ”It doesn’t matter. We’re all in danger, _right now_.”

”Oh? _You_ in particular already killed one of my people, and permanently injured two more.” She clangs her screwdriver against his chest plate. ”Why the _hell_ should I believe a word you’re saying?”

”They attacked me!” He’s come to realize that the whole thing was a trap all along, and they were planning on capturing him alive, but at the time he’d been fighting for his life.

”Of course they did! My instruments recognized your energy signature the moment you came within range, and you’re much too dangerous to run around freely. You’re a steambot-sized piece of concentrated Vectron power! And after I figured out you were the one who set up the device over at the temple that sabotages the efficiency of my reactor, capturing you was nothing but self-defense.”

She turns back to her work, and he’s left seething over her twisting him falling into her deliberate trap and fighting for his life into _her_ self-defense.

He has no idea how long he’s been here. At least months, but it could well be years.

Rosie perfects her system, and it’s hard to talk after that.

He’s kept in a state of constant power drain to the point of pain. Not unconsciousness, though. She needs him conscious to prevent power-downs, but his own system is left with only just enough to stay online. It feels like exhaustion beyond exhaustion, like melting and freezing at the same time, like every gear in his body is grinding the wrong way.

In hindsight, he’s been _so_ stupid.

He used to think he could save the world on his own. He didn’t tell anyone where he was going or what he was doing. No need to explain himself and deal with awkward questions and conversations he didn’t want to have. No need to worry people. No need to make the effort to work together, when he could handle it on his own.

But he _can’t_. He can’t save the world or even himself at this point, and the helplessness is wearing him down. He was never very good at making friends. He’s not sure anyone misses him enough to even look for him.

The quakes continue. The dampeners are still holding up – so far – but each quake chips away at the Earth’s crust and deepens the cracks. He knows it’s only a matter of time.

Rosie’s mood tells him that the dampeners also prevents her reactor from working at the efficiency she craves, but there’s not much she can do to get rid of them – it’s not enough, but he did do _something_ right.

At least Rosie isn’t using _him_ to fuel the reactor itself. It seems it’s already running on Vectron energy, and technically going at full capacity. Instead, she uses him to charge other systems that the shiners use. There’s space heaters, stoves, fans, even a few lamps.

Mostly, she wants to use him for her new project, which is something she calls a mech suit. To him, it looks like a large, gutted bot. Her idea is to put herself in a cockpit in place of its head, and him in its chest to work as its power system, like a grotesque parody of mechanic life. She claims it’ll make her strong enough to keep bots away from her clan’s caves forever, and that may be true. It’s still strange that she tries to make herself stronger by imitating a bot, only so she can show how much she hates bots, but he can’t muster the energy to question her.

At some point – while pacing the cave she uses as a lab and working on her own strength with her ”dumbbell” system – she mentions that another steambot has been looking for him.

It almost breaks him out of his stupor, enough that he raises his head. ”What?”

”A steambot came here and asked questions about you.”

”What?” he says again, dumbly. It’s difficult to form complete sentences without energy in his body. ”Who?” Her grin doesn’t mean anything good, but something almost like hope has already lodged itself in his powerless system. It shouldn’t be possible, but—

”Some blue-faced, girlish-looking thing. Red plating on the head, big goggles. About your size.”

The description makes it real, and despite the relentless energy drain, something inside him feels lighter. ”Dot.” If anyone would come looking for him, it makes sense that it’d be her. They’d made a good team, once. He regrets leaving her behind – he regrets so many things, now. But she still came all this way to find him, and hope is such a strange feeling.

Then the reality of who is telling him this hits, and the hope is dunked in fear. ”What… did you do to her?”

She shrugs. ”What do you think?”

He wants to curse, but he doesn’t have the energy to spare. ”You wouldn’t…” But she would, wouldn’t she? He’s alive himself – barely – because she has use for his Vectron enhancements. Anyone else—

She looks at him like his reaction is fascinating to her. ”Nah,” she says finally. ”I didn’t. It seemed like a sturdy bot, and I’m not one to throw away a tool that’s been handed to me.”

He knows his mind is not at its sharpest in his current state, but at first he can’t parse what Rosie means beyond the relief that Dot’s still alive. A tool? Rosie couldn’t use a regular steambot in the way she’s using him – and besides, no one else has been brought here. So she doesn’t mean that. But Dot wouldn’t willingly—

”You put me… as a hostage?” The thought that Dot would be forced to do some dirty errand for Rosie for his sake is uncomfortable, but it’s the best scenario he can think of. It would mean Dot _knows he’s here_. Rosie might be clever, but so is Dot. If she knows, she might be able to find him.

Rosie shakes her head. ”No, that’d just give her ideas. And you, probably,” she adds, as if reading his mind. Her grin comes back, and it’s not a pleasant one. ”I just gave her a few hints. Not even lies, technically. Told her that you’d been around, and that you’d been talking about a doomsday device. And then I pointed out that some of the bots up top might be able to pinpoint the quakes’ energy source. You know, those quakes that are being channeled and dampened through that device you put in the temple?”

“No.” He stares at her. “No no no.” That’s subtle, and plausible, and _evil_. He did give a “doomsday device” – well, three of them – to those cultists. Or rather, they assumed they were doomsday devices, and he didn’t correct them. It seemed like a good idea at the time, having the cult keep the dampeners safe. But if Dot finds them now, after Rosie’s hints, she’ll think she has proof both that _he’s_ the one plotting global destruction – and that all of the devices are dangers that have to be destroyed.

“Yep,” Rosie says. “I’m glad she came, actually. It might solve that problem for me.”

Dot is the kind of person that _would_ attempt to find and destroy them all. They’re alike in that way – stubborn as hell and trying to do the right thing. Without the devices, the reactor will go to full power, and the world will be destroyed in days. Because she came looking for him. Because he didn’t think to explain himself while he still could have. The terror he’d mostly been too apathetic to feel lately is roaring in his furnace again.

”Rosie,” he manages. His voice is barely more than a clatter. ”You know… don’t you? That you’re destroying the world?”

She scoffs, as if that isn’t even worth replying to, and leaves.

He’s close enough to the reactor that he feels the change when the first dampener is destroyed. The next quake is slightly worse than the ones that came before.

He doesn’t doubt that it’s Dot’s doing. In some twisted way, he’s almost proud that she’s going through with it. At the same time, he’d give anything to be able to warn her, to let her know that she’s being manipulated, that the dampeners are not what she thinks they are. He’s literally powerless, though. He doesn’t have anything left to give, and fate isn’t that kind.

Rosie starts to gloat, afterwards. Then she realizes that the reactor is still being dampened, only a little less so. It’s somewhat gratifying that she never knew there was more than one device, even though it makes her yell and rage now. He weathers it, and really, there’s not much she can do to him that she isn’t already doing, not without risking her precious power source. He’s not going to make life easier for her if he can help it.

”I shouldn’t have gotten rid of that bot,” she snarls. ”She’d have destroyed all of them for me if I had only known. Damn it all.”

That’s the part that makes him freeze, darkness threatening the edges of his vision. He heard that right. ”You killed her.”

”Basically,” Rosie agrees. ”I sent her to look for you in the ruins of Vectron.”

There’s some treasonous sense of hope in knowing that Rosie didn’t turn Dot into scrap metal herself. She could still be alive. But Rosie is right – he himself is the only bot known to have returned alive from Vectron, and he knows all too well that it was only because he’d been augmented and prepared by the parts of Vectron who wanted him to join it. Dot is not coming back unless there’s something down there that would spare her.

And she went into Vectron voluntarily, thinking that _he_ was there. That’s insanely brave. Even after seeing evidence that he set up a doomsday device, she still—she didn’t give up on him, and that almost makes it worse. He’s _not_ in Vectron, and he can’t save her.

Dot is dead, and maybe it shouldn’t matter when the whole world is on the verge of destruction. It should even be good that Rosie lost her pawn to speed the destruction up. But _Dot is dead_ , and he only wishes he was allowed the energy to cry.

He doesn’t expect it the next time it happens.

The hum of the reactor grows sharper again, a telltale sign that another one of the dampeners were taken down.

It’s insane to have his spirits lifted by the situation growing _worse_. Besides, there could be any number of explanations. Cultist in-fighting. Rosie’s own people growing bolder. Some other bot tracking the apparent source of the quakes and trying to save the world. But somehow he attaches himself to the non-zero chance that it’s Dot, that she’s back, that she’s still alive. And that feels like hope. He clings to it in the oppressing sinkhole of despair he’s literally bolted to.

Rosie seems to be in a good mood, but she’s not volunteering any information. When she goes into the lab at all, she stays out of immediate conversation range. He might be able to raise his voice enough to catch her attention, he doesn’t dare. If he’s wrong, he doesn’t want to know.

Even if he’s right, it only means his friend is still being manipulated to bring about the end the world.

When the third dampener is destroyed, Rosie is right there, working on her gouged-out bot-parts for the mech suit. The quake makes her look up, and when she sees that the power level of the reactor is up she lets out a triumphant sound. ”Yes! That’s a reliable bot.”

It takes longer than it should to process that, but once he does, he can’t stop himself. ”Dot?” His voice barely more than a click, but she hears it, turning in his direction.

”Are you…? Is Dot…?” It’s a struggle to form words.

Rosie studies him with the strange expression. To be sure, he hasn’t spoken in some time. ”Oh,” she says. ”Yeah, that blue-faced bot. She’s doing a really good job getting rid of your sabotage.”

There’s something stirring inside him, but any excess energy is sucked away immediately. ”She came back…?” he voices. ”From Vectron?”

”Apparently. Don’t know how – she said she didn’t know herself. But it was a lucky break for me.”

There’s some kind of emotion overflowing inside him, but there’s no way to express it. He’s not even sure if he’d laugh or cry or scream, if he could. ”Why didn’t you tell me?” he manages.

”You’re saying I should have?” Her voice is flat.

”She’s my _friend_. I need to know if she’s… if she’s _still alive_.”

”You don’t have ’friends’." It stings, because she’s probably right. ”And you don’t _need_ to know anything.” She sneers. ”You’re lucky I’m talking to you at all. You certainly didn’t tell me what _I_ needed to know.”

”I did, though.” He told her over and over again what she needed to know, what any decent sapient creature would have _wanted_ to know to stop putting everyone in danger. ”You didn’t listen.”

She doesn’t listen this time either. ”Fortunately, I know now that you made four of those devices, and there’s only one left. Once that’s gone, the reactor will be fully operational and my people will never have to deal with steambots again.” She pauses. “Except you, of course. Maybe I’ll seal you up so I don’t have to look at you. Or talk to you anymore, either. That’ll be nice.”

The prospect should be terrifying. She’d keep him like this forever, drained and aching, except completely isolated from any contact with anyone or anything. His only comfort is that it won’t happen, because once the last dampener is gone, the planet has very little time left. They’re all going to die, but at least the torture will be over.

He feels guilty for thinking that.

He doesn’t speak again.

There’s no use.

The last of the dampeners go down, inevitably. There’s a large quake, knocking over Rosie’s lab equipment, though the cave itself holds up for now. Rosie laughs. He wonders how long they have left. Weeks, at the most. Probably just days.

When the end comes, he can only wish Dot will realize it’s not her fault. It’s his, for being a recluse. For not telling her, or anyone. For thinking he could save the world on his own. If he’d told her about what he was doing while he still had the chance—but it’s too late, and it’s been too late for a long time.

Rosie brings her people into the inner sanctum and throws a party. The ground trembles ominously again and again, but she seems carefree, bragging loudly about how they’re all safe now, no more danger, no more scarcity, eternal moon juice.

He’s mounted on her mech suit, attached to its front like a combined power generator and trophy while she parades around in it, showing off her might. It’s a chance to see something other than the same wall as always, but he barely takes it. The other shiners poke him, curious, and Rosie’s talking about him like he’s a dead object, but he can’t bring himself to care.

Everything hurts. He tries not to think.

He doesn’t care when Rosie reacts to some signal, excusing herself from the rest of the revelers, or when she goes off to wait by the bend of the cave by the reactor room. He doesn’t think about the footsteps approaching, either.

” _RUSTY_!?”

The sound of his name pierces him like a power drill. It’s a bot’s voice, filled with confusion, relief and outrage all at once, and it takes a moment for his addled mind-cogs to click into place. He struggles to raise his head. ”D-Dot?”

It’s her. She’s dirty, her chassis is scratched and dented, and she’s clearly been through a few upgrades since he last saw her, but it’s _her_.

”You really shouldn’t have come back here,” Rosie says darkly.

Dot ignores that, hefting her glowing pickaxe. There’s rage in her eyes, and he’s never seen anything so beautiful. ”What are you _doing_?” she demands. ” _Let him go_ , Rosie!”

There’s a vibration going through him, and suddenly now he’s actively struggling against the power drain again. He’d thought he’d given up all hope, but Dot came back. For him. She’s here, now. And it’s too late—but _is_ it too late?

“Why would I?” Rosie scoffs. ”Do you know how many shiners were hurt capturing him? He’s a monster!” He can’t see her face from his position, but he knows she’s grinning that particular grin. ”Now he’s just a battery for my mech suit, and I’m finally strong enough to keep your kind out!”

”You _lied_ to me!” Dot yells, and there’s hurt and betrayal mixed in with the anger.

”I _used_ you!” Rosie retorts. ”You’re a tool! And I needed someone to get rid of those pesky devices. He built them to draw the power from my reactor – but no more!” She goes on about the power she has, and the power she deserves – power to keep her people under her thumb and power to keep bots away from her realm. He’s heard her say these things before, but it isn’t any less unhinged now.

Dot needs to know what the earthquakes really are. He forces his chin up again, and Dot’s eyes snap to him immediately. ”The earthquakes… The reactor is unstable Vectron tech…” It needs to be taken offline and dismantled, and maybe the Earth can still be saved. He doesn’t get that far, though.

”NO, YOU’RE UNSTABLE!” Rosie shouts, drowning out his words. ”I’M FINALLY IN CONTROL!”

”You’re insane!” Dot shouts back.

”ENOUGH OF THIS!”

She fires, and suddenly he remembers what panic feels like again. Rosie’s mech suit is ridiculously armed and armored, and this time, she does want to kill Dot with her own hands. And she’s using his own life force to do it. He doesn’t even have the power to struggle. He needs to turn himself off, to stop the energy feed, but he _can’t_. “Stop,” he pleads, quietly, uselessly.

Dot dodges. She briefly meets his eyes again, full of determination and righteous anger, and he knows she’s not giving up. He shouldn’t give up either.

By all rights, Dot should be completely overpowered. But she’s quick, and she keeps flitting around, looking for a way to get through Rosie’s defenses. Rosie gets more and more enraged at Dot’s refusal to get executed, throwing everything she’s got at her – bullets, missiles, bombs, even using her bot suit’s body mass to tackle the smaller bot against the wall trying to tear her to pieces. Dot takes a few hits, but her armor holds, and she keeps moving.

He’s thrown around like a soulless tin doll by the momentum of the mech suits movements, and it’s hard to see exactly what’s going on, but he does notice the collateral damage – and he’s not sure the others do. A chunk of Rosie reactor is blown off by an explosion that Dot sidesteps completely. The resulting quake causes an acid leak, doing even more damage.

Dot’s side has been heavily dented, pushing her plates up against her inner gears in a way that has to hurt, but Rosie’s not unaffected either. Dot is using the mech suit’s own strength against her, and even though it can’t run out of energy – because it’s _his_ energy – it’s not as well-made as Dot is. She’s chipping away at its armor – he can hear it crack and splinter.

Dot is determined to survive, and Rosie hasn’t even considered that she might not.

When the mech suit eventually falls to the ground, stunned, it’s over. Dot jumps up on the cockpit, and he can feel the crash when she breaks through. There’s a short scream, then a sickening wet sound, then silence.

Moments later Dot appears in front of him. She’s covered in bright red body fluids, and he doesn’t need to ask. Rosie is dead. He should be rejoicing, but there’s no time to process anything. The ground is trembling, and the reactor is blinking warning lights behind her.

”Rusty!” she says, getting up in his face, tearing at the bolts holding him in place. She looks even more battered close up. ”Are you okay? Say something!”

”Dot…” he manages. He wishes he could just talk to her, but his energy is still being drained, and there’s no time. The end is _now_. ”The reactor… It’s about to blow.”

She turns around, sees the damage for herself. She swears quietly.

”The quakes will destroy everything.” She has to have known this. She has to have a way to escape. ”You have to save yourself… Get out of here. Please.”

”Scrap that!” Dot doesn’t even hesitate. ”We’ll _make it out together_!” She takes her pickaxe to the energy conduit he’s attached to, frantically trying to get him free, and when that doesn’t work she breaks out a jackhammer. It takes time she doesn’t have, but he can’t bring himself to protest. He’d thought he’d given up on his own life a long time ago, but when it comes down to it—

Dot wants him to live. She came all this way, for his sake. And as much as he wants _her_ to live, he—he doesn’t actually want to die, either. Not like this, not alone and helpless.

Something that looks suspiciously like – a Vectron sprite? – appears out of nowhere and buzzes around her as she works, then zips over to the reactor. ”Hey,” it says. ”This is going haywire! Let’s get out of here _now_!”

”I’m coming, Fen!” Dot says, still working to detach his legs from the device. She’s doing a sloppy job of it, bits and pieces of the device and even his own plates scattered about, but he’s not about to complain. ”I’m almost done!”

Something snaps inside him when she tears out the wires from his back. The power drain stops. The _pain_ stops. It’s been so long that he’d almost forgotten how much pain he was in. It feels like he’s floating. Weightless. Empty. The world is blurring in and out of focus.

”Hey!” She must have felt his jolt, for she stops briefly, worried. ”Stay with me!”

It’s a struggle to stay conscious. ”I’m not…” His power systems are out of alignment, and words are too hard. He should be recharging, but he’s not sure if he is. Everything feels vague and far away.

He falls to the floor like a pile of scrap metal when she finally gets him off the thing, but he barely feels the impact. He makes an attempt to stand, or at least move, but just trying to use his freed limbs makes his vision darken even more.

”Come on,” she mumbles as the ground starts shaking heavily, making her struggle to stand, too. They can’t have more than minutes left, and she knows that as well as he does. ”We’ll just have to get back to town, to professor Sherman’s rocket!” He can feel her pulling him up, dragging him along over the floor, but he’s at least as heavy as she is, and she’s not built as a carrier bot. It’s too slow. She’s never going to make it to the surface, not with him in this condition.

”Dot…” he tries, but he’s not sure he makes a sound at all. He wants to tell her that she’s done enough for him – at least he didn’t have to die bolted to Rosie’s machine – but everything seems so distant.

”Come on, Fen!” Dot calls to the sprite. ”We have to hurry!”

”There’s no way we’ll make it back to the city like this,” the sprite says from somewhere behind them. It’s right, and for a moment he thinks it’s about to echo his own thoughts, telling her to leave him behind. ”But I can get the _two of you_ out in time!”

That’s nonsense. He’s drifting away, but he thinks the sprite is referring to some of Rosie’s scavenged Vectron tech, and Dot is pleading, desperate, but he can’t make out words any more.

He thinks he sees the desert sun, just for a moment, before he blacks out completely.

When he comes to, he’s in space.

More precisely, he’s outside a rocket ship that has landed on a large asteroid. Dot is holding his hand, and when his eyelights go on, she practically jumps.

”Rusty!”

”That’s still me.” He feels hollow, but his voice is stronger than he expected.

She hugs him.

For a moment he’s stunned, not knowing what to do with another bot clinging to him like he’s the only thing keeping her alive. But she’s _not_ stealing his energy. She’s not hurting him at all. He finds himself tentatively returning the hug, and the next moment he’s clinging to her just as hard. He doesn’t want to let go, doesn’t want to look around and see what’s left after the end of the world.

She saved him, when she shouldn’t have been neither able nor willing to. He doesn’t want to deal with the rest. Not yet.

”Thank you,” he says. The words aren’t nearly big enough, but it’s a start.

She shrugs it off, uncomfortable, and finally lets go of him. ”How do you feel?” she asks.

He thinks about it. ”Alive.” It’s the honest answer. He can see the cracks and remains of Rosie’s bolts in his arms, and there’s no real strength in them, but they’re still there, and he just used them without effort. He _is_ alive. Gingerly, he tries to sit up, and to his own surprise, he succeeds. ”And better,” he adds. There’s a vague, dull ache, like an echo of the energy drain, and his power levels are still low. But he’s apparently functional, and that’s a lot more than he’d expected.

”Good,” she says, glancing around at the scattered groups of bots huddling around the rocket ship. “No one here understands Vectron tech very well, but I think you were just completely depleted. You’re recharging now, so you should be fine.”

”Thank you,” he says again.

She looks away. She does look uncomfortable, and he notices she hasn’t even tried to fix herself up. She’s still battered, still covered in ruddy shiner blood, still has that painful-looking dent in her side.

He doesn’t know what to say. He hasn’t spoken to another bot in so long, and he was never the best at conversation in the first place. He’s still reeling, trying to wrap his mind around what happened.

He’s free. He’s still alive. Dot’s still alive. Rosie’s dead.

The Earth is gone.

It’s senseless, and he doesn’t know what to do with it.

”Are you okay?” he says, eventually.

”Yes.” That was an automatic answer, and a moment later she amends. ”No.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What do you have to be sorry for?”

A lot of things, not that he feels like listing them. He hesitates, then settles on “For putting you through that.”

“It’s not your fault! I was—” She looks away, fists clenched in her lap. “It’s all _my_ fault,” she adds, quietly. “I _destroyed the Earth_. I trusted her, and all this time she was—you were—”

“I know.” No reason to ask who ‘she’ is. “She bragged about it. But I don’t think—you can’t blame yourself for trying. She tricked you.” He puts his hand on hers. Dot is real, she’s here, it’s _over_.

“She told you?”

“She did. At least I knew you were out there.”

She shudders. “Out there destroying the devices you’d set up to save us, you mean.”

He grips her hand harder. “But that’s my fault,” he says. “I could have just told you what I was up to in the first place. Back when I left Tumbleton.”

She lets out a low whirr deep in her chassis, but doesn’t really reply. Instead, she runs her hand over the fresh bolt scars on his arm. “You should go see the mechanic.”

“So should you.”

She nods, but neither of them moves.

Instead of seeing the mechanic, they take a walk around the asteroid.

It’s slow going; he _is_ charging, but his energy is still low. But she was right to suggest it – just the act of moving around on his own power makes him feel more like a bot and less like a battery, and he needed that.

He tries to thank her again, but she shrugs it off.

“How much do you remember of how we escaped?” she asks, after a while.

“Not enough,” he admits. It’s all a bit of a blur in his mind. He twists his mouth to the side, trying to think, while also trying not to stumble on slightly unsteady legs. How _did_ she get them out in time? “I think you tried to carry me, but everything was falling apart fast. And then – there was a Vectron sprite?” He looks to her for confirmation. “Is that right?”

”That’s right.”

So he didn’t hallucinate that part. ”It activated a Vectron teleporter for us?”

Dot nods, sadly.

That makes a few puzzle pieces fall into place. But— “What _was_ that sprite?”

She whirrs quietly for a moment, looking up, then down at the pocked ground. ”I named them Fen,” she says. “They were fished out of Vectron by the cultists some time ago, and we met when I was looking for you. They were lonely, and only just learning to be their own person, and—they're kind of rude and obnoxious, but they're my friend. And they're the one who saved us, in the end.”

He freezes. Did she choose to save _his_ life over another friend’s? ”Why didn’t you just leave me?” he blurts. ”I was scrap metal at that point. You could have made it to the surface without teleporting if you didn’t have to carry all that.”

She stares at him. ”You would have _died_. That was never an option.”

“But—” So many people are dead. Why is _he_ alive?

“It’s okay,” she says, though she still looks sad. “Fen is a sprite. They could be—they _are_ still alive. I promised I’d come back for them, and I will.” She squares her shoulders, and he can see it, the same unyielding determination that made her come back for _him_. But then she shrinks. “I just don’t know how, yet.”

He feels empty, and strange, and reeling under the weight of a destroyed world – but he’s alive, and that has to mean something. He looks at her, and he knows he’s not going to leave her behind again. ”We’ll figure it out,” he promises.

Recovery is hard. 

It’s even harder when the world has been destroyed, everyone around you is a traumatized mess, and civilization itself needs to be rebuilt from scratch in an asteroid field.

Only a handful of rocket ships made it off the surface as the planet exploded. He might never have had a lot of close friends, but he's travelled around, and most of the bots he could name are dead now. The survivors are determined to stay brave, build, and flourish, but the loss is behind everyone’s eyes.

The shiners must have been wiped out completely. He tries not to think about Rosie, how he _told_ her this would happen, how she refused to listen. At the same time, it’s hard not to think about her. He keeps expecting to see her go about her business in his field of vision.

Sometimes he forgets it’s all over. He’ll be convinced he’s still in Rosie’s lab, still hoping to delay the end of the world, and Dot has to tell him that the world already ended, but life goes on.

Sometimes he just forgets he can do things, like he’s still immobilized. He’ll think about something, but Dot needs to remind him to get up and actually do it.

He’s been told it was almost a year between the time he was last seen in El Machino and the day the Earth blew. A year is more than enough time for a bot to get messed up in the sparks.

He misses home – the open plains and the blue desert sky. Now he keeps looking at the stars instead. He doesn’t like caves anymore.

Dot still blames herself. He keeps telling her it wasn’t her fault that Rosie manipulated her, that she only did what she was thought was the right thing, but that doesn’t help much when the guilt freezes her gears and he has to coax her out of a total breakdown. The guilt eats at him too, but he tries not to play the who-is-more-at-fault game. They can agree that they both made mistakes.

Finding Dot’s Vectron sprite friend has turned into a quest. It’s something productive to focus on, keeping both of them grounded, together. They’ve spent a lot of time reverse-engineering Dot’s jetpack system into something that can be used to jump from rock to rock out here, That makes life easier for the community, too, making it possible to stay in contact with the other survivors. The next step is to map the asteroid field, figuring out a way to determine which chunks used to be a part of the Earth’s crust, and possibly some way to track vectron energy out of those.

It’s going to take time, but they’re getting there.


End file.
